I'm hoping this is just a silly file permissions problem but I've not found an answer yet...

My system boots to run level 3 and I then start an X session with 'startx'. My wm is KDE-4.8.0 which starts and most things seem to work. Errors from the X server get logged to /var/log/Xorg.0.og but I get no errors from the X session. My /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession should be directing errors to an errfile at $HOME/.xsession-errors but nothing happens!

If I start the x session with an error redirect such as 'startx > .startx.log 2>&1' then I get errors and other messages to the appropriate file. I suspect the most probably cause is my Xsession file has not kept up to date with the rest of the system. Can someone post their Xsession file where logging works. I know I could start the session with the error redirect every time but I can't understand why it is not happen automatically.

As per the subject line I'm on slackware current of about 29/12/2011 and KDE-4.8.0-alien. I'd like to understand what has broken with the logging before I look at what appears to be a monumental mess with dbus and akonadi/nepomuk/virtuoso.

Dave

Marked this as solved since a bit more reading has explained what happens!

Rather than the settings in /etc/X11/xdm being read when startx is run it is the settings in /etc/kde/kdm that are actioned, so since the /etc/kde/kdm/Xsession file does not have an error redirect it was not happening !!
This is because startx is actually /usr/bin/startx and looks to /usr/share/config/kdm for it's setup info and in my system thats a link to /etc/kde/kdm

The question now is why does the kdm setup not invoke error logging to the $HOME/.xsession-errors file correctly since the request for logging is there and all the errors are showing on the term that starts X. More reading and trials required.

Dave